Prendergast helps old friends at home

It's hard to separate Bourgoin from their near-150-point aggregate concession on their visits to Leinster over the past few seasons. Or, better still, their 34-0 home defeat by Treviso in 2004. When you saw them lose at home to Cardiff last weekend, you feared for the quality of their commitment here. Then there was the thunderous standing ovation for the champions as they came on to the field for their first defence of the title at home. The scene was set.

The fact that the French went to the trouble of arriving a day ahead of the game suggested they were prepared to fight, and there was nothing about their body language in the first half-hour that suggested otherwise. It's what happened in the minutes immediately after that mark that made it hard for them to stay on track.

After 28 minutes they were trailing 8-6 and very much in the game. And then Mike Prendergast was sent to the bin.

The former Munster scrum-half was going fine until instinct told him to grab hold of Denis Leamy's shirt as the flanker was trying to stay in touch with a Barry Murphy break downfield. The effect of Prendergast's action on Leamy was minimal. The impact on his team was a whole lot worse.

Predergast's yellow card didn't just rob his team of a player who knew his way round the ground, but also of a delivery man. Three minutes later Ian Dowling did well to force his way over after an excellent break from John Kelly, and Munster were 13-6 ahead. And a couple of minutes after that, a French front-rower posing as a scrum-half fired out an awful pass from the base of a ruck on halfway. One turnover later and Trevor Halstead put Murphy over. O'Gara converted and suddenly it was 20-6. Three tries to zip and a lead of 13 points in Thomond Park? You can work it out for yourself.

There was a blip early in the second half, when replacement Florian Denos finished a length-of-the-pitch move to reduce the gap to seven points. In effect it was a 14-point turnaround, for Munster were hammering away for the bonus point when they handed the ball over. But within five minutes of that concession they had mauled their way to the Bourgoin line for Donncha O'Callaghan to break free and score.

That rebalanced the game at 27-13 with the last quarter still to come. It was fitting too that just after the hour mark it was John Kelly who pushed Munster out to five tries.

To their credit, Bourgoin didn't pack up early and go home, and they finished the game with three decisions going upstairs to the video referee. On the third one, Denos was credited with his second try.

For Munster, though, nine points from a possible 10 is an impressive start to their journey of retention.